Achievements

Finding myself with some free time yesterday afternoon, and knowing the Mrs. was also in Azeroth, I decided to try to put in some more time on my Warrior. Unfortunately, like many other folk I found myself on the receiving end of Error #113. The login server was busy and to try again later. No problem, I’ll just do the daily quest for Hearthstone instead. Oh, hey! Hearthstone is now live! Awesome. Wait, no. Can’t play that either because the Battle.net client won’t connect and thus I’m out of luck.

Almost three hours later, I managed to login to said Gnome Warrior and there was some mail from Mel Francis.

I clicked on the attachment and put it into my bags. A short time later the mount was learned and it was time for me to see how it looked.

Yes, mighty sexy indeed.

Now, I don’t know if it’s a current glitch or not but when I went Horde side the mount was still blue. Previews had suggested red and blue and I certainly figured that meant depending on faction. I hope it isn’t based on the toon that opened the mail because I would have most assuredly jumped Horde first in order to get the red one (only slightly more sexy than blue).

If you’re wondering where and how you get said mount, I should point out that about an hour before I got into Warcraft I was finally able to sign in to Hearthstone. With it now being live, they have implemented the mount achievement, which requires you to win three games against other players.

My efforts thus far to get where I want to be for Warlords has been met with limited results. It’s entirely my own fault as I’ve been spending my time Hearthstoning when free, usually in an effort to complete a daily each day. Yes, reader, that one has its teeth sunk in but good. Fortunately with some free time last night I finally got in some actually WoW time and took to my Gnome Warrior. The Mrs. and I did some puttering around but actually got into a dungeon pretty quickly(!) and I picked up a couple of levels in Blackfathom Deeps. After that she was kind enough to run me through Stocks before calling it a night. Another Gnomeregan run this morning and she’s now 27, on her way to 28. Go figure, as soon as I lament queue times, I have two occasions where it was less than 20 minutes. But, now that I’ve actually been productive to some degree, I figure I can increase said productivity and give myself a proverbial kick in the rear to do so…by jotting down some goals for the month.

Get Semblance the Warrior (27) to 35. My original plan was 25, but I accomplished that quite easily yesterday.

Get Paramita the Priest (41) to 45.

Get Elcombe the Mage (68) to 70.

Finally have Elcombe learn Alchemy, and then actually power level it to some degree.

Max out Saintvache’s Herbalism, currently 310.

Get his Enchanting (487) up over 500 as well. Who knows, might even Max it as well.

Get Junkshot the Monk (7) to 20.

Clean up Claws of Nature Guild Bank.

Get Liouxpold (85) at least one level in Pandaria.

Reach 2,500 Daily Quests

Not a vast list by any stretch, and many of the goals are pretty simple to obtain. I average about an hour and a half of free time a day, so I can’t be shooting for the moon. If I get all of these accomplished then it will feel like I’ve done something and will push me on towards the next ones in April. Let’s face it, many little things can add up to one big thing and in this case that one thing can be momentum. It wouldn’t hurt for me to have some of that the closer we get to Draenor.

It shouldn’t have been that hard. I was already more than halfway to Exalted with my Blade’s Edge guild. So, more rep granting quests (such as Elders and dailies) and I would be there in no time. When I got up this morning, I think I was actually about 75% of the way there. So I figured I would knock off the Kalimdor Elders and see where that left me. Turns out I missed a few. It wasn’t a big deal, as there are plenty of ways to nab some quests. I decided, for a change of pace, that I would head to the Isle of Quel’Danas and do those dailies.

I rounded them all up and handed them in…only to find those quests don’t actually grant any reputation outside of the Shattered Sun Offensive. Hrmph. So, off I went again. This time I headed to the Darkmoon Faire and did the quests there. When Saintvache was done there I was so close, yet so far. So I circled and picked up a few more Elders and did some pet battle dailies along the way.

Must get rep. Must get rep.

At long last I was a single quest away and I had to head back and hand in a pet battle quest in Orgrimmar. Huzzah! Exalted. Gimme my Dark Phoenix!…it’s not there. Neither is the Scorpion. Frustration begins to kick in and I inadvertently close the Guild Vendor window. I whisper Repgrind for advice but she doesn’t know either. Reopen the window and low and behold it’s there. But I don’t have Artisan Riding, which is required. Are you kidding me? Off to the flying trainer I go…

I have flying, but need better flying for a flying mount. Just take the damn gold already.

Alright. So, I’m Exalted. I have Artisan Riding. I…no longer have the gold on this toon. Oh come on already! Look at TitanPanel to figure out where my gold is. Wonder why the hell my level 40 Warrior has 2,000 gold and proceed to shuffle most of it, and some from my banker, back to Saintavche.

Yesterday Mrs. Amateur sent me this link providing a number of interesting stats on World of Warcraft, and I see now the link has become a bit more commonplace now. Essentially, it takes statistics from the game and provides some quirky insight into them. After reading everything over here are my thoughts on a number of them:

100 million WoW players in 10 yearsIf I’m in charge of maintaining the player base, I would want to take a look at that number. I realize it counts trial accounts and even Recruit-A-Friend accounts, but let’s look at it close. During Wrath, the game peaked at over 11 million players. As of last May, that number was down to 8 million. Let’s say for a second there was a 3-4 year window where the game had over ten million players. That leaves six years where it didn’t, and thus you start to see a turnover of accounts. The millions and millions who stopped, did so because…? I’m not heckling Blizz, it’s just something that I (as a number cruncher) would be intrigued to look into further.

The playerbase is currently 5% in favour of the AllianceI don’t know if I’m surprised by this or not. As a new player I remember hearing the kids roll Alliance and the players roll Horde. Now obviously that’s not accurate entirely. Of the players I know, there’s probably a pretty close split though if you include alts I think the Alliance gets the edge. Still, whenever I see current tier accomplishments they always seem to be Horde. Or rather, they were before I stepped away. I can’t say in this very moment whether or not that’s true. But, I also attribute it to the fact the Alliance have four staple races of RPG’s: Human, Dwarf, (Night) Elf, and Gnome. For some, it might be easier to gravitate to what they know.

Most popular title: The PatientJenkins is number two. It’s surprising, and yet it’s not. The only reason I have that title in my inventory is because I did the run to help others get the title. Lucky me. As for the Patient, that’s one I definitely use and I think anyone that uses the “Looking For” system almost has to. The other popular one for me is “Elder.”

Rarest Mount: Heavenly Onyx Cloud SerpentI know nothing about this mount, shy of doing the old Google shuffle. A less than 1% drop rate from the Sha of Anger. Huh. Well, odds of me getting that are right up there with the Baron’s reigns. Still, that it isn’t the Swift Spectral Tiger at the top of this list really surprises me.

There are 504 unique mountsWait, what? I haven’t even qualified for the Albino Drake and there’s a strong probability someone out there has over 500 mounts? Wow.

Tiny Red Carp is the rare petOnce again, I’m a bit surprised. It definitely sounds like this is one of those fluke casts in fishing (much like how Lioux caught the one at the Darkmoon Faire), but still. If the bloody Minfernal isn’t up there, the Ethereal Soul Trader should be.

71 Auctioneers in AzerothAs someone who frequents said gold houses, I have to sit and come up with all of them. I don’t think I realized there was nearly that many.

3.6 million Pet Battles per dayI wish to track down every person who said this was a stupid feature to include in World of Warcraft. I also tend to believe that 2/3 of these are done while folks are waiting to do something else (such as an instance or PvP). Either way, the mechanic became an incredibly successful time sink and achievement magnet. It also creates a great alternative to leveling (such as I posted when Saintvache hit 90).

All in all it’s an interesting collection of information if you’re a numbers person such as myself. I’d love to see it go even deeper, particularly into classes and races and male percentages and female percentages. But then, I also realize I’m in the minority and a good many folk would walk the other way with disinterest.

Yes, Saintvache finally capped this morning. As you can see I picked up a sexy set of achievements in the process. Better late than never. Despite a higher survival rate than Tumunzahar, I definitely found the leveling process to take longer. Perhaps because there was such a hiatus in the middle of Tum’s go that it didn’t seem so bad. I will say, quite obviously, it improved when I ended up in a new guild. The XP boost was nice. But even so, I found 89-90 was smoother than the rest of Pandaria. I think because even when I couldn’t really hop on and bang out some bubbles of experience, I could still take about 10-15 minutes and do three little quests to get me close to a million xp per day.

I would start with the Cooking Daily. On Horde side, my personal preference is Thunder Bluff. They’re all pretty simple and if you land Mulgore Spice Bread, you’ve really got it easy. I will say a Fishing Daily will help even more, but few of my toons have fishing (two come to mind). After that I took the Blasted Lands portal, where I headed to Karazhan for the Pet Battle Daily, and then back to the Blasted Lands to go through the Dark Portal and do the Pet Battle there. As I said, three quests, almost one million experience.

For what it’s worth, you need just over 18 million experience to go from 89 to 90. If you did just this every day and used your time for other toons, you would ding in just under three weeks. Sure, that still seems like a fairly long time, but not when you’re only popping on for 15 minutes at a time. You’d be there before you know it (toss in the Darkmoon Faire around the same time for a couple of easy Profession Quests as well and you’re laughing).

So now what? Well, I joined said Guild last Saturday or Sunday and thanks to the Lunar Elders and the rest of my ventures, I’m halfway to Exalted. Since I helped them unlock the Dark Phoenix mount, I find myself beckoned to finish that rep and get said mount. I’m sure part of that will come via the Timeless Isle. Once again, it has more appeal as a class that can throw out some damage and survive, versus my Holy Dwarf. Along with that, it’s probably time to start boosting the rest of the Amateur Army. I know Liouxpold is on Pandaria, but I can go without the place for a little bit.

The Darkmoon Faire ended for another month this past Saturday. I managed to spend some time at the Faire last week…on Saturday. It was just one of those weeks that included a brain fart the Faire was even going on. Still, I made it with several toons and that’s what counts most. In doing so, though, I noticed some changes.

I don’t remember creepy lady…

After the new welcome sign that genuinely feels like I’m violated just looking at it, it was off to the usual NPC’s. I grabbed my profession quests and knocked them off and then headed straight to the Turtle Toss. Let’s face it, it’s the only game at the Faire that is guaranteed to only take one token. A moment later I was done, and…what’s this now?

I get a present now? No more tickets? Upon opening the present it turns out you do still get a ticket. Emphasis one. So if you pump a whole pile of tickets into the cannon now (and the teleport back), you may waste that money on gaining a single ticket towards your heirloom, pet, or whatever it is you seek to buy at some point. Now, the good news is that you can actually get a pet in these presents. The chances, like everything else, are pretty slim. Mine were actually worse than slim once I logged off Saintvache. The two he got were two more than my other toons combined.

I haven’t tried either one out just yet, though Mrs. Amateur says the Top Hat is fab-u-LOUS! In the meantime I haven’t checked to see what else is possible from the presents but it’s definitely a big change to how things work. Farming tickets just got a lot harder and will take a lot longer. I’m not sure if it’s because pets and mounts are shared, and now heirlooms can be too, that they feel folks don’t need to be stockpiling the tickets as much. If each toon focuses on something different to buy then you can still acquire things somewhat reasonably. But for those that want things sooner than later, this will no doubt upset them. I’m fortunate in that when I logged in, Saintvache had 89 tickets. Once he picked up another ticket, I sauntered on over and got myself a monkey. Named him Sallah (points if you get the reference).

Last night after work I decided to hop online. It was one of those instances where I had no real purpose. I puttered around with Elcombe before deciding to get some experience for a few very low level pets (1-2). After a few battles and a couple of pet dings, I remembered something I had read on Wowhead:

“I don’t know about anyone else but trying to farm this up during the day wasn’t going to happen. I was only able to get that to spawn at night. Keep this in mind when farming the pet up on your server.”

I had tried once before to get a Jade Oozeling, but had zero luck at all. Granted it was during the daytime but that could be coincidence. Still, Elcombe hopped on his flying carpet and off I went.

Upon landing in the Hinterlands I first knocked off the pet battle daily because who doesn’t like some quick and easy experience? Then it was off to Skulk Rock to see if I could find a baby ooze. The first thing I noticed was how many people were actually questing there at that hour. I counted no less than six (and helped once any had tagged mobs), both Horde and Alliance. I was a bit concerned that if I did get an ooze to spawn, I was going to lose it to one of them.

Undaunted I started killing all the maggots in the cave. Then I killed them all again. And once more. I spent half an hour killing maggots before that magic little green paw appeared on my map. I ran to the top of the cave in a flash, only to realize it was below me. I quickly jumped down, and there it was.

Now I was smart enough prior to entering the cave in the first place, in that I made sure I had level appropriate pets to combat it. Take a lesson from the Amateur, nothing is quite as detracting as finding a rare spawn or simply rare pet and killing it because you forgot to downgrade your pets, or worse you get cakewalked because all your pets were too low to do any good. So in this instance, I was good to go and while the Oozeling was only a common, I did capture him a short time later. I don’t know what it is, but thus far Elcombe is a significantly better trapper than Tum.

I haven’t decided whether or not to use a stone to upgrade it. At a later time, I may even come back and try for a better quality one, though the stone seems far less dependent on a great deal of luck. The important thing is that I’m now down to 10 pets to capture for the Eastern Kingdom Safari achievement.